Module Three: “Learning to be invisible.” All graduates will weigh 40kgs by the end of this course.

There are two kinds of depression patients: Those who think nobody cares about them and those who need to convince everyone to stop caring about them. If you fall into the former group, skip forward to Module Five.

(Continued Below)

The third module is “Detachment.”

Hospice patients disengage from their lives before they’re ready to die, and so will you:

One.

Person.

At a.

Time.

You will form new attachments with death. Any ritual will do to get you there: Three times a day, count how many benzodiazepines you’ve collected through fraudulent prescriptions even though the number hasn’t changed for three weeks. Check that your blades are still in the downstairs cabinet six times daily. Google your suicide strategy for the 50th time so that you don’t wake up in some fucking ICU ward with a tube down your throat and a catheter in your fucking urethra.

Your death lust is now at level “Obsession.” The idea of your demise will no longer scare you, but give you hope. It will be false hope because suicide tells you that dying isn’t agony (it lies). Suicide tells you that nobody will grieve you (they will). Suicide tells you there will be peace (there will be nothing).

I graduated to level “Death”. There was no white light, no tunnel, no peace no relief no darkness no Jesus Christ no fucking oblivion no Zen because there were people in the world who still loved me. Doctors. Friends. Family. They stuck me back together and I woke up in an ICU ward with enough hatred for life to start a cult.

The opposite of suicide is not a desire to live. The opposite of depression is not happiness. It’s connection, intimacy, love. These are the only things that kicked me out of my psychic numbness, and reconnecting with the world and its people was more excruciating than dying had been. It hurt because it forced me to be present, to acknowledge the world around me, to exist in my body instead of in my obsession. It hurt more than almost anything had ever hurt me, but then it healed me.

Learning how to reconnect happens in phases. Feeling worthy is not a requirement—you don’t have to feel you deserve love to experience love. It will happen all on its own.

Module One: How to Stop Being Invisible

How to Show Someone Every Corner and Crook of your Imperfect Exquisiteness Until They Can Love You Utterly.